


Fighting for a Draw

by misscam



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-08
Updated: 2008-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:53:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscam/pseuds/misscam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura Roslin loves a good fight. No one said anything about a clean one.  [Adama/Roslin]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fighting for a Draw

**Author's Note:**

> Set some undertermined time after "Revelations", and contains a few vague spoilers for that episode. Fairly PWP with a smidge of serious. For bluerosefairy, who wanted banter and boxing. Sorry about the porn. Many thanks to trialia for beta!

Fighting for a Draw  
by **misscam**

Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.

II

"I wonder, Admiral, would you know how to get me on my back?"

There is, Laura Roslin observes, something strangely sensual about watching William Adama splutter into his drink and look up at her with eyes bluer for the surprise in them.

She likes that she can still surprise him. More or less living with him, enduring cancer treatments with him, sleeping with him, rebuilding Fleet morale with him after the crushing blow of Earth, leading with him, loving with him and she can still sometimes deliver a surprise hook. It keeps the balance, because he sure does know how to do the same to her.

"It would depend, Madam President," he says carefully, placing his glass away, "in which arena I would be facing you."

She waits two heartbeats and a breath, enough time that she can see his jaw clench slightly. "Boxing."

"I see."

The tone of his voice, deep and with a touch of disappointment makes her toes curl already, and she flips off her shoes to curl her legs underneath her. He watches, gaze caressing skin where hands are not, and she has to keep herself from edging closer to his seat on the couch. Not yet.

He watches her for a moment longer, clearly trying to read her game and considering his own strategy.

"I'm not sure we are in the same weight class," he opens, giving her body a look that half seems to weigh her as she is and half seems to strip her to get the clothes out of the number.

"Your dance, Admiral," she reminds him, smiling faintly at the memory. "Anyone is fair game as long as they take their tags off."

"You don't have dog tags," he counters, but she knows how to duck that one and deliver her own jab.

"I guess that means I am fair game all the time."

Silence. She watches his hands ball slightly before uncleanching and going for the buttons on his uniform. Opening them just enough to reach in and lift his own tags above his head and to the table with a faint click.

"Fair game, Laura," he says, and she wonders how he manages to make her name a caress on its own.

"Fair game, Bill," she agrees, rising to her feet. He stands up with her, taking the Admiral's jacket completely off now. She doesn't reach out to stroke the lines of his arms, but she knows he knows she wants to simply by the faint smile he gives her.

She lifts a hand, balling it, and he meets it with an open palm, her knuckles sliding against the lines of his skin. He nods slightly, lifting his other hand to her shoulder and pushing his palm lightly against that too. Diloxin makes him more careful than he might have been otherwise, she knows, but his eyes are so gentle she thinks it isn't much.

"You would have to get close to your opponent to compensate for your reach," he observes, and she steps closer even as he says it. "This would leave you vulnerable as well."

"I do excellent footwork."

He looks down, his gaze travelling the length of her legs all the way to her toes. "Yes, you do."

"And you?"

He looks up again, and she uncurls her fist against his palm, pushing her fingers between his and locking his hand in hers.

"I prefer to block and wait for an opening."

She nods, lifting her left foot slightly and pressing her knee against his thigh. He doesn't even flinch, she'll give him that. "And then?"

She isn't sure exactly what he does, except the hand at her shoulder is suddenly at her back and the hand in his is suddenly at his face and her body is against his, both guards down.

"Then I win," he says, his face so close she can feel his breath against her cheek. "When I want to."

She used to hate those flashes of arrogance in him, she remembers. Before she found them in herself, before she learned you can afford doubt after, not while making the choice.

"Would you like to win?" she asks, pressing her knee even higher and this time, he does groan.

"In this case," he murmurs, lowering his head to where her shirt has slipped enough to reveal her collarbone, "I could agree on a draw."

"Draw," she breathes, closing his eyes when she feels the warmth of his mouth against her skin. "I could agree on a draw."

"Done," he says, and kisses her. It's still gentle, light pressure against her lips until she parts them and tastes the faint smokiness of the drink he never finished. She wonders briefly if this counts as getting alcohol in her system, which Cottle has expressedly warned against while she's on Diloxin, but decides she doesn't give a frak. It's much more important to get Bill into her system, on which her body is expressedly insisting.

She exhales as he lets himself fall back on the couch, making her half straddle his thigh, her upper body resting against his chest. He looks at her in the way that he does, and she is, as always, surprised how strangely beautiful he can look. Maybe it's just to her, but it doesn't matter if so. He is, and she loves him.

"I love you," he is the one to say, brushing a few strands of her wig away from her face. "Is this..."

"This is a good day," she assures him, unbuttoning her own shirt and quickly removing it as if to prove it. She shivers slightly in the air for a moment, at least until he supports her with a hand on her back, his palm warm against the skin and bones of her spine.

"Sure?"

"Of course."

He must detect a note of annoyance in her voice, because he cups her face and looks at her intently.

"I have a stake in this too," he says, his voice softer than his expression, pressing his lips against the bridge of her nose almost feverishly. "You lose this one, it's not just you getting the knockout."

"I know," she whispers, wishing that she didn't. "I love you."

"We find ourselves at a draw again," he says, finding the hook of her bra and deftly opening it with one hand, something she knows requires practice and skill. She lowers her hands as he slides the bra off her, watching her nipples harden with exposure to the air.

"Love is war?" she breathes, watching his thumb brush against her right nipple, drawing circles around it while his hands cup the rest of her breast.

"Everything is a fight," he says, lifting his arms obligingly when she begins pulling his tank tops (what is with the plural, military, she briefly wonders) off. Those out of the picture, she can see and trace his scar. He'd almost died on them then, but she hadn't known what she would have to lose at that point. Now she does, and she traces the path of it with soft kisses, her hands fumbling with his buckle.

"Military thinking," she counters, hooking her legs around his waist when he rises, kissing his ear as he manages to get them both across the room and towards the bunk. She doesn't make it easier on him by keeping a hand on his buckle and nearly making him drop his pants halfway there. He does step out of them after setting her down carefully, as if she's made of glass.

"You're in bed with the military now," he points out, lifting her legs and sliding her skirt off, discarding his own underwear at the same time.

"Mm."

She plans to say more, but his fingers are already removing her last item of clothing and she has a brief second to feel a little bit silly before he lowers his head, his hair tickling the inside of her thigh.

Right. Good tactic. Good manoeuvre. Good military thinking. Good Admiralish iniative. Good... Frak, just good. Actually, 'good' seems a bit pale when she can close her eyes and still see lights. Upgrade to 'very good' seems in order, and distantly, she hears herself whimpering.

It's strange how pleasure can make the body feel so distant, she observes, a strangely coherent thought when the rest of her brain seems to be only the sensation of Bill's mouth and her own flesh. It's too much and not enough, and she reaches down to lift his face to meet her gaze.

"Bi- _iill_ ," she hisses. "Good day today. Don't just... I want... Oh, frak you."

His bunk is not the most spacious of places, but she manages to get him on his back and climb over him, trying to kiss the amused expression off his face all the while. It's not particularly successful, at least until she lowers herself with the angle just right. Then he just looks comical for a second, lowering his eyelids and exhaling sharply when she moves slightly.

"Frak me, right," he mutters, his voice so hoarse it almost breaks. It seems to reverberate in her skin a little as she leans down and kisses both his eyelids, and his nose, and his jaw, and the corner of his mouth, darting her tongue across his lips.

When he kisses her, he moves too; sharp thrust and pause, sharp thrust and pause, on and on and controlled until she bites down on his bottom lip and bucks her hips at the same time. He makes a noise she's grown to recognise (through careful study) as Bill-is-about-to-lose-it, and she pins his arms down when he tries to reach for her and make her come first.

Not this time. Not today, she decides, and clenches her mucles at just the right time. He rolls his eyes slightly back, and she watches every nuance in on his face, cheek warm against her palm. Bill, she thinks, her body humming with it.

He looks a little bashful when coherence returns to him, but she simply smiles until he can't help but return it.

"It would appear you have me on my back," he murmurs.

"It would appear so," she agrees. "It is a good thing this is frakking and not boxing, or I would win."

His laugh isn't loud (after Earth, no one's is anymore), but it is genuine and still fills her. She savours it, as she learned to do with all the days she'll have now.

"Draw," he offers, as she lowers herself next to him, his shoulder warm against her neck.

"Draw," she agrees. It's always been that between them. It's the only way it works, especially now that it's not just the balance of Admiral and President. There's Bill and Laura and love too, and a tightrope across the end of the world.

"What's going on?" he asks against her temple, breath warm against her sweat. "Why boxing?"

"My father loved it," she says, and he nods, because he knows that.

"You love a good fight."

"I love a good fight," she agrees, lacing his fingers in hers and watching the shades of skin meet. "Now I need to fight one."

When he kisses her, she knows he's understood, because she can almost taste relief and hope on his lips, a faintly salty taste like tears dried. He is a fighter. All the blows he's remained standing through tell that story, and she's enough of a teacher to know when to learn as well.

"We," he says, lips still lingering so close to hers she can't tell their breaths apart. "We need to fight one."

Life never gives fair battles. Laura Roslin versus cancer, round two after a disqualification in round one. She will fight it until life counts her out, and if having Bill on her side is cheating, frak the rules.

She loves a good fight.

No one said anything about a clean one.

FIN


End file.
